Top 20 Snowiest Ski Resorts
December 6, 2007, 9:22 am
My story on ForbesTraveler.com today — “The Top 20 Snowiest Ski Resorts in the World” — honors the snow gods from Washington’s Mount Baker to Hokkaido, Japan, where the white stuff piles so deep some years that resort workers have to dig out chairlifts.
The story highlights the top 20 snowiest resorts on the planet, as tracked by Bestsnow.net, which pulls meteorological records from weather stations, data from avalanche-forecasting centers and monthly snowfall amounts from ski resorts.
Our list includes big boys like Snowbird as well as little-known mountains like Whitewater Resort in British Colombia, which is smothered each season under an average of 397 inches of snow. Alyeska Resort near Anchorage, Alaska, made the list with its yearly 513-inch figure, as did Kirkwood Mountain Resort (473 inches) and Boreal (395 inches), both near Lake Tahoe in California.
The deepest of all? That title goes to Mt. Baker Ski Area, a resort on the flanks of its namesake 10,778-foot stratovolcano in northern Washington State. Indeed, Baker once recorded a snow year so mythically deep that it’s regularly cited as the most snow measured anywhere, ever, on the planet.
Baker has always been known for its tremendous annual snowfall, but during the winter of 1998/99 the gloppy snow of the Pacific Northwest literally buried anything in local memory. By season’s end, Baker recorded 1,140 inches of snow — a near-apocalyptic 95 feet of the frozen white stuff. “It was a legendary year,” says Tony Crocker of Bestsnow.net.
Read the full story on “The Top 20 Snowiest Ski Resorts in the World” here: http://www.forbestraveler.com/skiing/snowiest-ski-resorts-story.html
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This story highlights the top 20 snowiest resorts on the planet, as tracked by Bestsnow, which pulls meteorological records from weather stations, data from avalanche-forecasting centers and monthly snowfall amounts from ski resorts. Bestsnow’s numbers—which are used by publications like Skiing magazine and Powder magazine to rank resorts—differ from average snowfall numbers touted by some resorts. This is because, among other factors, Bestsnow looks at monthly averages spread over time periods of up to 40 years.
Boreal ski Resort is located in Soda Springs near Lake Tahoe area of California in the United States. Boreal is the first resort to open for skiing and snowboarding in Northern California. Boreal was earlier referred to as ‘Boringhill’ for its relatively small size when compared to other Tahoe resorts. But today the resort has gained much prominence to have Boreal ski resortshed its nickname. In 2009, it hosted the US Snowboarding Grand Prix. Tahoe and Truckee in California and Reno in Nevada are the nearest cities to Boreal.
In the Canadian mountain fantasyland north of Montana, Fernie Alpine Resort is a rising star skiers are seeking for trails, chutes, tree runs and deep powder. Bonus: Fernie’s 2,500 acres include five high-mountain bowls buried each year by hundreds of inches of deep white snow.
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Why wasn’t Squaw Valley included on the list? It shows an average snowfall of 444in. Boreal was included on the list and it has an average snowfall of 395in. What gives?